crypto cult programming

crypto cult programming /n./ The believe that if you throw enough crypto babble at your code, put in enough hashes, rounds of encryption, bits of keys, you will end up with secure code. Somewhere along the line of cargo cult programming (link to the jargon file).

I was sitting here, thinking about one project idea that seems to have stalled due to some inherent trust problem in a client-client relationship. Then I read the post Putting Unique Codes on Objects to Detect Counterfeiting from Bruce Schneier. Hey, I said to myself, maybe something like that could do the trick. But yeah... no trust is no trust here, no matter if you make it cryptographically twiddleable.

Which reminded me about a flash game that one company I worked for back in .ch had made. Some people were cheating on the high scores. We thought long and hard about how to encrypt stuff, sign stuff, crypto up stuff... but as long as everything is on the clients computer, really "secure" is not going to be an option, it's still gonna be crypto cult programming.

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